Dresden, July 2003

(Click the thumbnails for the big picture.)

So July was my second trip in GP to Dresden to visit Kathrin's family.

On our first night, Robin decided to bring us a little gift. Now that really convinces me that we should get a cat. Dead mammals in the bedroom and a smug Tabby looking for praise, yippee!!!

We took a trip over to the town of Görlitz which is just on the Polish border. It's a nice old town with plenty of evidence of the decay of the old GDR and the work being carried out to modernise the place.

We happened to stumble across the wedding of Eminem to his secret Asian girlfriend. We were not invited to the reception.

Which is probably just as well because there were rumours that these two would be playing. Not good!

The round tower above is the Kaisertrutz which was successfully occupied and defended by a Swedish garrison during the 30 years war. Exactly what a bunch of Swedes were doing this far over is anyones guess, but presumably they weren't trying to form the Abba of the day.

Just for Mert, the most eastern Kebab shop in all of Germany :-)

This is the border with Poland. We didn't go over as we'd forgotten to bring along our passports. People stream back and forth all day as the Germans find it a lot cheaper to nip across the border to do their shopping.

Bogstraße, clearly there the really rural folk of Görlitz reside.

Above you can see a tree growing around a wall, oh and a gay friendly bicycle stand.

This is where we had lunch. The most eastern restaurant in the most eastern town of Germany. And the beer wasn't bad either.

After leaving Görlitz we stopped off on the way back to Tharandt at the castle of Stolpen.

As you can see, the first thing we found inside the castle was the old torture chamber. All sorts of ingenious ways of causing the maximum amount of pain possible without actually killing the person too quickly. Serious Weapons of Individual Destruction!!!

The castle has a great story to it in that Countess von Cosel (the former mistress of the king, Augustus the Strong) was kept imprisoned in the tower above for about 40 years between 1716 and 1765. Apparently she used to help him out with his political decisions. Seems he was Augustus the Strong, but not Augustus the Particularly Bright. Anyway, she gained a lot of popularity amongst the people and he saw her as a threat to his power so had her locked up in the tower. She died in 1765 aged 85.

The paintings above show Countess von Cosel and Augustus.

And this would be her grave.

The model above shows the castle in it's entirity with clear plastic sections showing the bits which are no longer standing.

Sunset in America. Ok so it's not America but the site of an ambitious project to recreate a botanical map of Northern America, including the great lakes, the Missouri river, the Rocky mountains and the Apalacians. Click here to read about the project. It's all in German at the moment. It's possible to sponsor tracts of land within this project. For the sponsorship you get a commemorative plaque and various other stuff. Contact details are on the web page previously mentioned if you're interested in finding out more or getting involved with the project.

Click the Right-Hand to see the rest of the Dresden photos. I put them onto 2 separate pages to make it easier on people with slow connections.